Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 1465

Aging is a life process where the body slowly breaks down and becomes more vulnerable to external stimuli. For example, bones in older individuals become frail and muscle deteriorates. Additionally, older individuals are more susceptible to disease with a compromised immune system. In many cases there are protocols and guidelines in place to protect those with high susceptibility to disease. During the COVID-19 pandemic older patients had to be extremely careful to avoid contracting COVID-19.

Unfortunately, aging is a natural part of life. However, scientists are working to make the process of aging a little easier. Due to the increased average lifespan, aging has been a progressively growing field. Physicians and scientists are working to understand how we age and if there are secrets to be uncovered that would help avoid, prevent, or cure age-related diseases, such as cancer.

Stem cells are self-renewing cells in the body with the ability to differentiate into any cell type. The outcome to which final cell type it turns into is dependent on what the body needs. Regarding the immune system, the body generates more myeloid immune cells. Aging of the immune system is best characterized by an imbalance of these immune cells. Other immune cells including lymphoid cells related to adaptive immunity are reduced in number while myeloid cells and inflammatory pathologies are increased. Many believe that stem cells may be the cause of this imbalance.

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Scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School have uncovered why some pancreatic and colorectal cancers fail to respond to Wnt inhibitors, a promising new class of cancer drugs currently under development for these cancers. Their discovery, published in Science Advances, not only offers a new cancer therapy target but also a potential screening tool to identify those patients who will not benefit from this new therapy once it becomes available.

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Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative movement disorder that progresses relentlessly. It gradually impairs a person’s ability to function until they ultimately become immobile and often develop dementia. In the U.S. alone, over a million people are afflicted with Parkinson’s, and new cases and overall numbers are steadily increasing.

There is currently no treatment to slow or halt Parkinson’s disease. Available drugs don’t slow disease progression and can treat only certain symptoms. Medications that work early in the disease, however, such as Levodopa, generally become ineffective over the years, necessitating increased doses that can lead to disabling side effects.

Without understanding the fundamental molecular cause of Parkinson’s, it’s improbable that researchers will be able to develop a medication to stop the disease from steadily worsening in patients.

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The next innovation in cancer treatment could be to test all possible drugs on thousands of miniature versions of a person’s tumour, grown in the lab, to see which works the best. The technique, sometimes called drug sensitivity testing, may have already helped a few children with advanced cancer live for longer than the standard approach.

It could eventually become routinely used for everyone with cancer, says Diana Azzam at Florida International University in Miami. “I would say it will help guide treatments in any [cancer], whether it’s aggressive or not.”

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An Israeli medtech company is using artificial intelligence to help oncologists decide the best and most effective course of treatment for their cancer patients.

OncoHost’s main focus is on treatments for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). According to the World Cancer Research Fund, lung cancer is the second most common cancer (after breast cancer) and responsible for 12.2 percent of new cases of the disease.

In fact, OncoHost CEO Ofer Sharon tells NoCamels, lung cancer “is the number one killer” among patients with this form of the disease.

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